Bonlebon writes in about the arcade cabinet he built – “My Mame cabinet, the Procrastination Station. Time from deciding to do it until finished project: about 6 months. Money spent: way too much. It was a lot of fun though. I still have a few things to finish up, but it’s definately playable.” Nice work! Link.
Matt writes “My short how-to on making a doorstop form pvc pipe. I like to think of pvc pipe as the modern day erector set….an old house and the inherent settling which may and does occur; our floors and doorframes aren’t exactly level or square. This being the case my office door has a tendency of closing on its own ever so slowly. While I have done my best at making adjustments to the hinge locations it still wants to close. Now I could buy a doorstop at my local home improvement mega-store but what would be the fun in that? Hence my homemade pvc doorstop.” Link.
Here’s a great how to for simple bot “The following article will show you how to build a simple robot, called “The Beetle Robot”. It’s great for beginners and easy to do. Most of the components can be bought for much cheaper at Digi-Key, Jameco, or similar. At Solarbotics you can find the dual AA battery holder and the Mabuchi motor. You can find these components at any good electronic store.” Thanks William! Link.
The sixth annual Bloggies are here and we just voted for our favorites (there were a lot, but our pick for weblog of the year is We Make Money Not Art. The MAKE blog launched in 2005; we just passed the 3,000-post mark, covering all things do-it-yourself. We hope to do even more this year, so head on over and vote for us and your favorite blogs if you like what we’ve been cooking. Link.
Alex writes “There was a Videopac 7400 with a broken power switch in the attic. Next to it was a NES which only life sign was a blinking power led and blinking screen. These would be my two victims: I would try to fit the Videopac inside the NES-case. Not hindered by any technical skills whatsoever and with a newly acquired dremel-clone, I made a start.” Link.
Southpaw writes “Theo Jansen, Dutch physicist turned sculptor has been perfecting or “evolving” his strandbeest (beach animals) for the past 10 years. They are beautiful Davinci-esque machines, some with dozens of legs, and are designed to roam the beaches on the power of the wind. Included is a link to an interview from October. Hooray for the blurring line between art and engineering!” Link.
Wow, nice project and the MP3s on the site are fantastic! – “SIDman is a portable SID music playing device. If you don’t know what SID music is, then get thee to here now. The SIDman was an experiment to see if a PIC microcontroller could emulate another processor in real time, and still carry out other functions. It seems to have been a success :-). There are still a couple rough edges here and there, but it seems to handle most tunes fine.” Thanks Johan! Link.
